


Oró sé do bheatha 'bhaile

by thisnightsrevels



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Enjolras, F/M, Ireland, Irish Language, Irish!Taire, M/M, Multi, ace!Enjolras, irish accent, irish character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 10:17:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10637832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisnightsrevels/pseuds/thisnightsrevels
Summary: One evening at the Musain, R drops his usual, flawless French, and instead lets loose a stream of what sounds like a horrificly mangled version of English on his unsuspecting friends.And that's only the start of it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Massive shout out to Brooklynboy (@starshideyour-fire on Tumblr) for dragging me through his and being her usual amazing self.
> 
> Any Irish used within the chapter will be translated at the bottom.  
> Title is an old Irish song, translates to something like "You're welcome home," "You're coming home."

It was a typical evening at the Musain-

Enjolras had commandeered the attentions of Courfeyrac and Combeferre to tell them of his plans for their next rally while they waited for the others to arrive and get settled in.

Cosette and Marius were already there, the latter trying to convince a petulant Gavroche to do his German homework. He had tried to help him with it numerous times before, but Cosette knew full well that Marius had been doing more work than Gavroche and clamped down on the pair. Now Gav had to do at least three quarters of the work himself or he didn't get any of the muffins Cosette had brought.

Bossuet and Musichetta had commandeered the chairs nearest the fire with the excuse that Joly would need the warmth once he got in from his shift at the hospital. Meanwhile Bahorel was trying to convince a shattered Feuilly to play some complicated card game with him, completely ignoring the man's protests. Down the back, somewhat removed from the rest of the group, were Jehan -decked out in one of their more… colourful jumpers- and a surprisingly relaxed looking Montparnasse.

It had taken forever for Prouvaire to convince him to allow them to drag him to a meeting and once he had it took innumerous apologies for him to come back. Because really, Jehan should have seen the inevitable shower of glitter coming. Courfeyrac tended to get a tad over excited when it came to ‘initiating’ their new members. Marius had gotten off lucky-Bossuet had been coming in behind him, tripped and gotten the brunt of it. Still, Parnasse had agreed to come back, so obviously something had caught his interest. Tonight though his attention was squarely on Jehan as they rambled on excitedly about the latest thing they had been studying in class. Anyone watching would call the look on Montparnasse’ face one of absolute fondness, anyone who pointed this out would get a fist to the throat.

Beside them the aging door swung open to reveal a tired looking Joly. Leaning heavily on his cane he made his way over to where Musichetta and Bossuet were waiting for him. Despite Grantaire's jokes about him being a regular Dr.House, Joly loved his job at the paediatric ward, and the stickers covering his cane made it evident that his patients loved him too. 

Speak of the devil.

The door swung open again, and in came Grantaire. He nodded amiably to Bahorel and went over to greet Enjolras with a quick kiss.

“What kept you?” he asked.

Grantaire shrugged as he swung his bag down beside him. “Watching the match and it ran on into overtime.”

Enjolras looked back to Combeferre, ending the conversation. If Grantaire thought some silly soccer match to be more important than L'ABC then that was his business. While the artist might not have the same beliefs as his boyfriend he still supported Enjolras in his endeavours towards a better future for all.

With that, Enjolras stood up and, squaring his shoulders, cleared his throat to signal that the meeting had begun.

Feuilly and Baz managed to tear themselves away from what had become an intense game of Go Fish, Joly sat up a bit straighter on Bossuet's lap and Marius stopped trying to bribe Gavroche five euro to complete his homework. Enjolras greeted everyone, thanked them for coming and opened the floor to discussion.

Arguably the most important part of the meeting, it opened the room for everyone to bring forth any issues they had had during the week. A large part of the group were some part of the lgbt community or were descended from immigrants, and discrimination was a topic they could all share easily. Musichetta recounted how some asshole had tried to cop a feel during her shift at the Corinthe, only for her to turn around and ‘accidentally’ pour four of those obnoxious cocktails that stain everything they touch all over his nice white shirt. Enjolras put up a show of chastising her on why she shouldn't do such things, but was fighting a grin even as he spoke.

Bossuet was about to tell yet another story about some disaster that befallen him when Grantaire's phone suddenly started blaring out the chorus to Come Out Ye Black and Tans. Bossuet fell silent as everyone watched R scramble to fish his phone out of his battered bag. Freeing it, he quickly stood up and left the room to answer, apologising to Laigle as he went.

The door didn’t shut properly behind him, leaving the assembled group privy to what sounded like something that was sounded nothing like French, and only vaguely like English. “Ah jayz man, sure that sounds excellent! Sure, yiz hasn’t called me in so long I was beginning to worry if yiz had abandoned me to rot!”

Ferre and Courfeyrac exchanged glances. It sounded nothing like Grantaire, but there he was, chatting away to his mystery caller.

“Anyways, sure whatya callin’ me fer?” There’s a pause. “Jayzus Mary mother o’ Joseph! Are yiz serious?! Ah, sure, that’s great news! Sure I’ll be tellin’ himself in a second! I have to get back to the others, I was in a meetin’ when yiz called. Good luck t’yiz.”

With that he hung up and sheepishly sidled back into the room, making his way back over next to Enjolras. “Sorry about that, love.” he murmured, back to the usual French. “Family call, couldn’t avoid it."

“A family call?” sputtered Enjolras. “You have a song about going out to kill the police force for family!?”

“What? Calm down, man. It's only a song!”

“It’s about the cold blooded murder of the police force!”

“Enj, it’s about going out to defend their homes from the English, not cold blooded killings. Which, incidentally, is what the Black and Tans did. They hunted people down, and they murdered them.”

“They were an Auxiliary unit brought in to protect the public from the IRA rebels!”

“Protect the Protestants, more like! They didn't give two shits about the Catholics! About the real Irish!”

“The Protestant community had just as much right to be called Irish as the Catholics!”

Grantaire stared at him for a moment, baffled by his naivety. “You realise,of course,that the only reason the Protestant faith existed within Ireland was that the English invaded the country? There was a reason that it was only Protestant men that were able to vote right? It was because the English imposed a law stating that only landowners could vote, and, lo and behold, only Protestants and members of the Protestant Descendancy owned land! They wiped out our people! Our whole way of life, obliterated! If it weren't for the likes of Douglas Hyde we wouldn't have anything left at all! Almost every problem with Ireland can be traced back to the English!”

“Oh yeah?” countered Enjolras. “Name one!”

“The Famine!” shouted Grantaire. “The eradication of our culture! The fucking Troubles! They're still in effect today! Sure, the IRA have officially put their gun beyond use, but that doesn’t magically wipe away the centuries of racism and classism! Need I remind you that our flag is not ‘Green, White and Gold,’ it’s green, white and orange! And it is for a reason! The North is still fucked up, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves it isn't!”

“Hang on,” broke in Courfeyrac. “You're Irish?”

Grantaire looked at him incredulously.

“Yeah, where did that come from?” chimed in Bahorel. “I’ve known you for years! You said you were from Lyons!”

“Baz,” forced out R. “I said I had family in Lyon, not that I was from there.”

“It’s news to me too.” When Grantaire turned around he saw that Enjolras was looking rather put out. “Why did you not think to tell me?”

Now Grantaire was feeling uncomfortable. “I s’pose it never really came up? I assumed that you knew?”

“Well obviously not!” interjected Enjolras. “If I had of known I wouldn’t have told you off for that stupid song!”

“Told me off?” Now Grantaire was getting worked back up to his prior state of annoyance. “I’m not some stupid little schoolkid! Gee, I hope you don’t call my mother!”

“Well how could I?!” shouted Enjolras. “I’ve never even met her!”

“I have tried to arrange for ye to meet, Enj! Excuse me for trying not to take up too much of your time!”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?!”

“Enj,” cut in Combeferre. “You had to go to hospital last year because you collapsed in the street.”

“Irrelevant!”

“Enj,” added Courfeyrac. “You put yourself there because you forgot to eat or sleep for two days straight. There is a very good reason we were so supportive of you two moving in together.”

“Fuck this.”

The attention now turned to Grantaire as he crammed his stuff back in his bag. “I’m going out for a while, don’t wait up.”

“Taire-!”

Enjolras’ cry fell on deaf ears as the long-suffering door was slammed once again. A low whistle sounded from the back of the room and the assembled students turned to see Parnasse lounging across the small couch he shared with Jehan.

“What do you want, Montparnasse?” snipped Courfeyrac. “What could you possibly contribute to this discussion?”

As expected, when Jehan had first introduced Parnasse to their friends he had been met with what could optimistically be called aloofness. They had less warmed up to him than they had thawed out slightly.

That being said,Courfeyrac still held him at arms length (preferably over a cliff, but Jehan didn’t need to know that).

“Just saying,” drawled Parnasse. “That was the worst possible way that could have gone.”

Jehan cuffed him over the head. “Hush, you. You’re not helping either.”

At the front of the room Enjolras was looking a little shellshocked. He mumbled something to Combeferre, who in turn announced the conclusion of the evenings meeting.

 

 

It had been a while since they had had an argument, reflected Enjolras as he let himself into their apartment. Sure, they still had their usual lengthy debates about politics, the pair wouldn’t be the same people without them. But it was rare they rarely had actual arguments anymore.

Still, it wasn’t unusual for Grantaire to take some time away from everyone to cool off. At least he no longer went off on the tear, or fell back into any other ‘old habits’ to cope with stress. Since he and Enjolras had (finally) gotten together he had made a concentrated effort to cut back on his drinking, and while he hadn’t completely removed it from his life, Grantaire was now able to stick to the old ‘Just two will do,’ rather than lose himself completely.

Patria, their grumpy tortoise-shell cat, made herself known by stretching up and slowly but firmly digging her claws into his thigh. Jolted out of his reprieve by the demanding feline he gently unhooked her claws and scooped her up into his arms. Without realising it, he began to talk to Patria as readily as though she were any one of his friends.

“I wish he had of told me before blowing up like that. I wouldn’t have spoken the way I did if I’d known. I mean,” he swung her up in front of his face to look her in the eye (singular, she had been like that when R found her ). “I mean, surely that’s the kind of thing you tell someone when you start dating, not three years later!”

Patria glared at him before swinging her head to one side and biting him savagely on thumb. With a pained cry Enjolras dropped her, causing her to twist in surprise and claw down his arm as well.

Recovering, the old jellicle stalked away to the back kitchen where she seated herself by her food bowl. There was the look of an empress about her as she watched the grumbling man suck on his bleeding thumb, waiting for him to come to his senses and feed her. Glowering, Enjolras complied, cursing the mangy old thing, not for the first time and certainly not for the last. Removing his coat and shoes at long last he trudged into their shared bedroom and collapsed upon their bed. He was shattered, absolutely bone tired.

Even before R had blown up at him- no, that wasn’t right. It was his fault. If Enjolras had been a little more sensitive about the topic, something he, admittedly, didn’t know much about, then R wouldn't have felt the need to lash out as strongly as he did, which in turn meant that Enjolras wouldn’t have managed to stick his foot in it quite as badly as he had.

And now Grantaire was in the wind, lord only knew when he’d get back. The last time he’d had to leave before his temper got the better of him was when some asshole in a bar wound up shoving Enjolras and breaking his wrist. Even then that had been two years and an anger management course ago. It had been entirely Grantaires idea to go, saying that there was no way to paint it as a bad idea. Enjolras had, rather begrudgingly, agreed, and up until Enj had gone and put his foot in it, things had been pretty great!

He groaned into his pillow before pulling it out and holding it over his face. Understand that when he made those comments that he had assumed it was just ‘R being R’, that he was using using it as a joke, a jab at Enjolras’ revolutionary ideals. He could use the excuse that he had had a long day, hell, a long week! But twist it however you like and the blame would still rest squarely on him.

 

 

Across the city in a poky little library sat Grantaire, equally as conflicted.

He should have told Enjolras when they started dating, not just assume it meant as little to their chief as it did to him. Because, when you get down to it, all that mattered about someone was how they acted towards others, how they treated their fellow man, not where they came from!

Look at Marius, genuinely such a nice guy, salt of the earth! A little bit naive, maybe, a bit scattered, but when it came down to it he was a bloody genius. Been through hell and back since his grandfather kicked him out, dropped from the top of the food chain- a baron, no less!- to a homeless student living off Courfeyracs couch. Despite all this, despite having to suddenly support himself entirely- remember, this was in the middle of March, and he wasn’t eligible for student grants because he was still technically a dependant in his grandfathers name. Despite all this, he had pulled himself out of absolute poverty, gotten a steady job, a girlfriend whom he adored, friends who cared for him. You would never know it by looking at the guy that-

Okay, enough about Marius, Grantaire chided himself. You’re getting hysterical.

He could wax poetic about Pontmercy later, right no he had more pressing isses at hand.

He had screwed up his relationship, big time. There was no way Enjolras wouldn’t hate him now. After all, if R hadn’t of kept his nationality a secret then there wouldn’t have been an argument and the love of his life wouldn’t hate him. The best thing ever to happen to him since he moved to Paris and he had blown it. Realisticly, the only solution was to go crawling back to Enjolras on all fours and beg for forgiveness. Or was it?

The thoughts swirled round and around in his head, each one worse than its predecessor. Anxiety flared up, causing his hands to shake. Recognising the heraldic signs of an oncoming panic attack Grantaire forced himself to focus on the woodgrain of the shelf in front of him.

The books were arranged into alphabetic order, and the spines of those in front of him formed the same pattern as the asexual flag, black, gray, white, purple.

Asexual. Enjolras is asexual. Stop it. The wood, Taire, look at the wood.

Wrenching his gaze back to the shelf, Grantaire zeroed in on a particularly complicated looking knot, and distracted himself at last by imagining ways in which he could draw it. Watercolours would be nice, but you can’t beat a good charcoal. Slowly, ever so slowly he pulled himself back from the edge of the attack. The shaking of his hands slowed, then stopped. His breathing returned to normal. Now that he had a handle on his unruly emotions he was able to think clearly.

“You’re being ridiculous,” he muttered as he made his way out of the winding stacks. “Enjolras loves you, he’s not going to dump you over some petty argument.”

Grantaire stood out of the way to let a gaggle of tipsy college girls pass him on the footpath. “You were both in the wrong. You know how he gets over these things, even ones that seem like no big deal to you are massive to him. At the same time he shouldn’t have gone on as though he knew more about home than you do, especially in a way that was sympathetic to the fucking British of all things!”

He stopped for a moment to negotiate his keys out of the clusterfuck that was his bag. “Even still, you have to remember that anything he learned about it would be from different perspectives to what you’re used to, he is French after all.”

By now he was beginning the neverending pain in the ass that was the climb to their fourth floor flat. “You’ve only ever had it from the ‘Fuck the Sasanach’ point of view, whereas he would have gotten he watered down, neutralised perspective that the rest of Europe got.”

Grantaire let himself inside the flat, smiling wearily as Patria stalked into view, demanding attention like a petulant toddler. It had taken a while for her and Enj to see eye to eye, but there was never a question of geting rid of her. She had been one of worringly few things that kept him sane the few months between moving over to Paris and meeting Bahorel (who in turn introduced him to Feuilly, who lived with Jehan, who was friends with this guy named Courfeyrac who was practically brothers with these two guys who ran an organisation named Les Amis de l’ABC, pun intended).

Enjolras’ shoes were tucked neatly into the shoe rack that had been a gift from Joly (“You may want to risk infection from tracking bacteria everywhere, but there is no way I’ll speak to you if you do.”) so clearly his beloved Adonis had made it home safely. With a sigh Grantaire made his way into their room, where he could vaguely make out the silouhette of Enjolras curled up on the (their) bed. He sat down gently on the edge of the bed, trying not to wake the other man, but it appeared Enjolras was no more asleep than upstairs yippy chihuahua. The Enjolras-shaped lump rolled over to face him.

“I’m sorry for shouting at you, R. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did, and I apologise to the way I reacted to that stupid song.”

Grantaire smiled softly. “It’s alright, my love. I’m sorry too, I should have remembered that you dislike that sort of thing, and I probably should have told you that I’m actually not French before we dated for three years.”

He shifted onto the bed properly, stretching out alongside Enjolras. “Truce?”

“Truce.”

The pair fell silent for a moment before Enjolras asked whom R had been speaking to.

“My, uh, my little brother. Eoin.”

“Oh, what did he say?”

R bit his lip a moment. “He’s getting married in March, and he wants us to come.”

Beside him Enjolras tensed. “Us? Do they know about me?”

Grantaire smiled and curled up around Enjolras.  “They know as much about you as I would tell to Cosette's father, and that I love you.”

He felt, rather than saw, the man beneath him relax.

“I love you too, R.”

They fell asleep like that, arguments resolved and love declared.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Morning After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A painfully short interlude before I write what has come to be called The ConversationTM.  
> It is written I swear, I just need to transfer it to the laptop from my copy

The next morning was awkward to say the least.

 

As always Enjolras was up first, needing to get ready for his early morning classes. 

It had been a long night, so he was trying to keep quiet, to avoid waking Grantaire, but of course Patria had other plans. When he went to step into the hall he was accosted by a streak of shabby fur that sent Enjolras crashing to the ground and Patria screaming up the curtains where she crouched, hissing and spitting.

Behind them Enjolras heard the bed creak as Grantaire shifted and woke up.

He blinked and looked around blearily.

“The fuck?”

Enjolras at least had the decency to look embarrassed.

“Sorry I woke you, Taire, I was trying to let you sleep in a bit.”

Grantaire grumbled a bit and swung his legs over the bed. “Well I’m up now, and so is Patsy by the look of things.”

With that he heaved himself up and trudged over to the curtains where he began making the little “ _shooey-shooey_ ” noise that everyone does when calling cats. From her perch atop the world the wizened old harpy sat up straight began to wash her paws, cooler than cool. 

From his vantage point by the door, Enjolras saw the way R’s shoulders slumped in defeat as the cat made herself very comfortable and proceeded to fall into one of her legendary coma-level naps.

Then he pushed himself off the frame and cleared his throat.   
“Look, R, I have to get to work, but I swear we’ll talk when I get home, okay?”

The other man turned around and walked over to Enjolras. Grantaire grabbed his wrist and drew him closer before pressing their foreheads together and taking a deep breath.

“Promise?”

“Promise”

Grantaire released the breath and let go, only for Enjolras to catch him around the waist and pull him in for a brief hug. They shared a moment before Grantaire pushed Enjolras away and chided him gently.

“You’ll be late! Now go! I’ll see you later!”

He followed Enjolras out into the hall, watching as his boyfriend darted here and there, snatching up the last few bits and bobs, before finally stumbling out the door, his arms full of things that could easily fit into the bag over his shoulder or any of his numerous ( and empty) pockets.

The door swings shut behind him, leaving Grantaire alone to  face the day.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone familiar with Waterford, imagine a super concentrated Portlaw accent.


End file.
